CV

MICHAELA HOLDENRIED is professor for Neuere deutsche Literatur und interkulturelle Germanistik at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. ‚Habilitation‘ in German Philology (Neuere deutsche Literatur) at Free University, Berlin. PhD in German Philology at Free University. Studies in German literature, political sciences, history and latinamerican studies at the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin. Professional and administrative experience: Since 2013 Vice Dean in the Faculty of Language and Literatures, ALU Freiburg. 2010-2013 Dean of Studies in the same Faculty. Since 2009 Full professor at ALU. Between 2002 and 2009 Visiting professorships at the University of Stellenbosch, University of Capetown; University of Vienna; Woodruff-Visiting Professor at Emory University Atlanta; Max Kade Distinguished Professor at Lafayette College, Easton, PA. Member of the IVG, the SAGV (Südafrikanischer Germanistenverband) and the GIG (Gesellschaft für Interkulturelle Germanistik). President of the board of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Theory and History of Biography (Vienna) 2006-2012. Member of the board for “Acta Germanica”. Member of the board for “Zeitschrift für Interkulturelle Germanistik” (ZIG). Her research focuses on representations of alterity, travel literature, identity and memory as well as on autobiographical writing.

FRIAS Research Project

The two tier project is a contribution to research in travel literature. With the introduction of cultural science issues, it addresses a desideratum: to probe into and to broaden research paradigms, which up to now have been rather hermeneutically positivistic. Beyond Brenner’s 1989 standard work, new approaches to travelogues, based on an exemplary inventory, still remains to be formulated. Firstly, the genre “fictionalized expeditions” is taken into account with emphasis on contemporary German literature and comparative excursions into French and Anglo-American literature. Points of departure are the tendencies in the last three decades to deconstruct the explorer as a hero, a focussing on historically minor characters and new perspectives on expeditions altogether. At the same time ethnographical, psycho-social, aesthetical dimensions and concepts of knowledge are noted, aimed at rewriting former narrative experiences of otherness as part of post-colonial revisions. On the second level, the results of exemplary inventories are to be synthesized within the framework of an encompassing review of travel literature and its theory.